You haven't revealed your country of residence which affects parts availability.

CPU Cooler:The p183 has room for a 120mm fan based cooler like the cheaper Scythe Mugen 2.

Chassis Fans:A hot gaming system can't be silent while gaming. It can be reasonably quiet and non-annoying at idle. PWM fans are an good way to easily achieve quiet operation at idle and still supply cooling power at full load. Considering the heat load of your current proposed system you might try 2 PWM fans for the chassis on a PWM y-adapter connected to the to the Cpu fan header and a fixed rpm fan on the CPU heatsink.

It's a question whether your current configuration could be "a very quiet gaming desktop".

1 If you read the review, you may already know P183's case fan is noisy since the lowest speed is still very high to silencers (i.e. 1200rpm). You need to invest some money on some low speed fan (single fan at the rear is sufficient for your configuration).

2 You need a better CPU heathink with at least using 12cm fan. To achieve the same air flow, 12cm fan can run at lower speed and generate less noise. Either Scythe Mugen or Thermalright HR02 can be a recommendation, the former is very cost effective.

3 I don't think a card like GT460 can be quiet especially when it's loaded. You may need to consider changing the heatsink, but this will violate warranty. However, this can be done later after you finish your build and make sure it's the #1 noise source.

4 I don't remember whether SPCR has reviewed TX650, but you have better choices with better noise and performance, such like Seasonic X series (X-560 should be sufficient). Note that TX650 even doesn't belong to the high end in Corsair's product line.

Not sure whether this changes can be within your budget, at least it is in China

Because they are more efficient, you should take a look at the ATI Radeon cards. In particular, the HD 6850 is roughly the same performance as the 460 GTX 1GB. If you step up to the 6870, that is more like a 470 GTX. Both could be fitted with a GeLid Icy Vision and be made silent, even while gaming hard. That's the route I would go. The load power consumption is like 30-40 W less than the nVidia card.

Should also consider something like the Silverstone Raven 2 or the Antec Solo.

Also you could probably go with a Seasonic 560W 80plus GOLD certified PSU, would be more than enough for what you're looking at. I'm doing fine with my 430W power supply. Corsair can be hit or miss.

2 You need a better CPU heathink with at least using 12cm fan. To achieve the same air flow, 12cm fan can run at lower speed and generate less noise. Either Scythe Mugen or Thermalright HR02 can be a recommendation, the former is very cost effective. [/url]

What you say is valid, but the small Noctua with the dual 92mm fans is a very effective cooler. With the fans set to low it is both effective and quiet.

So while your recommendations are clearly better than the original choice, but surprisingly the little Noctua is not a bad decision. It packs a lot of punch in a small package.

The LIAN LI PC-A05NA is an aluminum case that weights about 8 or 9 pounds. It is a world of difference.

It takes fewer hard drives though. What it does is place the PSU where some of the hard drives would go... making it a smaller more compact case while still having room for the longest video card you would ever want to use.

At $89, it is very low cost for a Lian Li (they usually cost a few hundred dollars). If you are not familiar with Lian Li they are renowned for their construction quality. My one instance of support from them was like nothing I have ever experienced in the PC industry. Highly personalized assistance and then they sent me a part for free that they really didn't need to send.

Both are excellent choices. Seems like the Fractal R3 might be slightly better due to power supply location. (on the bottom). I think you would be good with either one. Some people have criticised the Solo for not breathing enough, the fractal might breathe "too much" you might end up blocking off some of the vents...

Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo Pro is dead silent even if you push it to its max speed. You’ll be unable to hear it over your case fan or CPU Cooler; I can bet you on this one. Due to some BIOS limitation, you can’t push fan speed over 80% but I think pushing it further isn’t needed as temperatures are really under control even with automatic speed. You can also make a fan profile of your own choice using MSI AfterBurner.

Usually EU prices are far higher than NewEgg ones (mostly because of VAT) but, above all, they may be in a different relationship between each other, which can change the convenience to buy such a part instead that another one. IMO it would be better if you can supply a more reliable price reference than NewEgg, for France.

justice99 wrote:

Thank you very much for your answer, the Radeon 5770 is not that powerfull, do you another quiet model who equal the GTX 460 ?

Not for the same price or the same quietness level, but if you're not an hardcore gamer, the R5770 performance level might be sufficient. However, just as a side note, IMO/IME you can't use such tools (Anandtech Bench) uncritically: just let me do a brief example. If you usually gamed at WoW with a typical (good) 22-23" monitor, more probably that not the 5770 and the 460 would perform virtually identical, even if the 460 is generally speaking more capable. So you have to assess which games you more often play, and on which monitor you would play.

You may also go for that Gigabyte WindForce you have opted for initially, but then you must mod its BIOS (if you are able to do so) to let the fan run slower at idle. Modding a VGA BIOS is probably nothing too much difficult to do (there's a thread about it in the relevant video section of SPCR forum), providing that you do have any second card for recovery a bad working/corrupted BIOS on your modded videocard. Take also note that even some vendors have modified their original GTX 460 BIOS (MSI with the F1 BIOS for the GTX 460 Cyclone OC for example seems to have achieved good results with reference to quietness).

IMHO the next good option would be the MSI R6850 Cyclone running it in its "Silent mode" (not as good as the R5770 on load). If you can spend more, instead, a very quiet card (probably nowadays the quietest without modding BIOS/making custom fan curves/swapping the heatsink) is the MSI R6870 Twin Frozr II OC.

justice99 wrote:

About the CPU Fan, Newegg says that Scythe SCMG-2100 noise level is between 0 and 26.50 dBA, and the Noctua NH-U9B SE2 is at 18 dba, what do you think?

You give the feeling you're not so experienced about parts quietness or silencing a rig. Those declared data has little or no relationship with how actually quiet an heatsink can be. Some clever review (such as SPCR ones) has more, you may give a read to the site.

Generally speaking there are no (apart few exceptions, fanless) "truly" quiet parts: every cooler run at full speed is noisy (to be said, mosts are not enough quiet even at intermediate speeds, a very few ones are still noisy even at their baseline fan speed).

So it is the Noctua, and also it is the Scythe (somewhat loud at full speed). I have more than a doubt that a pair of 1600rpm Noctua B9 can really be quieter than a 1200rpm Slipstream PWM (I own both those fans, even if I used the Noctua as an intake fan).

A CPU cooler *can* be made quiet only slowing down its fan: to slow down any fan you can either rely upon BIOS capabilities, SpeedFan or an hardware fan controller. Using SpeedFan or an hardware solution is a far more effective and flexible solution than relying upon any BIOS built-in fan control, so a CPU cooler can be made more quiet with the former alternatives (which are strongly recommended).

How far you can slow down a fan is a matter of temperature: always generally speaking, a bigger fan tends to run slower than a smaller one for the same temperature, and a bigger, more massive heatsink basically let you lower more the fan speed to achieve the same temperature.

With these respects, the Scythe fan bundled with the SCMG2100 heatsink is probably the best sounding fan around you can have bundled with an heatsink and it is a 120mm fan (the Noctuas are 92mm fans), and the Scythe heatink has much more cooling power than the smaller Noctua U9 (as a matter of fact the Scythe has almost twice the mass, and more heatpipes than this one). It will usually also costs less than the Noctua: so it gives a far better value than the Noctua.

Paired with a cool Sandy Bridge CPU, I think that both may be effective: but why would you want to pay more, in order to have less (even if that less is probably enough)?

Another option in Europe (even in the USA, but not on NewEgg), so check your local prices, would be the Cooler Master Hyper 212 plus: it usually costs almost the half of the Scythe or less than half the Noctua, but it does need a separate new fan (the bundled one is just too noisy to be used by a silencer). The possible savings may be invested onto a better videocard, for example.

justice99 wrote:

The Atanc Solo looks so weak comparing to the Fractal R3, i just checked some video, the Fractal R3 is full of gadgets to limit noise. Should i really think of buying this model?

It is exactly the contrary: there is no case in the world with so many anti-noise characteristics as the Antec Solo, which is also more sturdy and IMHO aestethically even better refined than the R3. The Antec has different drawbacks: it tends to heat up more the PSU area, it cannot accomodate videocard longer than 25cm, its power button tends to go flimsy in the long run, and you have to check/swap its hard disk suspensions regularly (at least every 18/24 months or so about).

Give a look at the relevant SPCR review (even if it's a bit outdated) too see all these features.

justice99 wrote:

For the Power supply, i will take the Seasonic X-560, everybody love this model so

Yes, it's an awesome PSU (apart sample variance) but take in mind that for some less money the alternatives I gave you are equally excellent, each one within its own limit (the cable management, mostly). Indeed, to use in a top mounting position I would rather the bigger Enermax all the way round, or rather the smaller Seasonic X-400 (fanless) providing that the Seasonic X-560 controller is a tad aggressive, noticeably more than the Enermax 87+ one.

Unfortunately at factory settings those Calibres turn out to be among the loudest GTXs on the market, providing that Sparkle has preferred an aggressive behaviour in order to have among the lowest operating temperature for those cards.

IIRC it is so for the more recent GTX 560Ti, but even the GTX 460 seems very close.

Obviously you might modd its BIOS (as for any GTX 460) and then slow down the fans hacking a custom fan curve through Rivatuner/Afterburner (and obviously YMMV).

Eventually, I don't know in France, but usually Calibre isn't such easily available (it's sort of a niche player).

The Atanc Solo looks so weak comparing to the Fractal R3, i just checked some video, the Fractal R3 is full of gadgets to limit noise. Should i really think of buying this model?

If you get good components it shouldn't make much difference.

In my opinion, in the not so distant past, getting a "quiet" case was important. Now a days, with todays quiet components, getting a "quiet" case is important... except for the most obsessive of us.

Without test reviews by the same reviewers on both cases you just can't know which is quieter.... but the Fractal R3 weighs 1/3 more than the solo and it seems that most, if not all of that, is sound absorption material.

I find it hard to believe that will not give it a quietness advantage over the Solo. On the other hand, do you really want to buy a 30 pound anchor?

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